Tag Archives: Community Gum

I swear, the PO is holding my packages and then delivering them when I’m away on my periodic business trip to Omaha. Once more, a pair of packages was waiting for me when I got home.

The first was a slew of UD Documentary from Jon at Community Gum. When it comes to UD Doc cards, when you’ve seen one you’ve pretty much seen them all, so I’ll only show the Gold parallel he sent, plus a nice extra throw-in:

The second package was from Chris at Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz, and contained a passel o’ 2005 Topps Total as well as several other treats, such as a few of this year’s Heritage Chrome, a few Bowman, etc. I always like picking up cards for Chris, because I know which players he collects 😉 (and I have a few more here piled up again, dude!)

But like you all, I have often wondered exactly what IS Community Gum? Well, as a member of the Ministry of Information Retrieval (“Be Safe; Be Suspicious”), I did some digging and uncovered the following details:

Community Gum is located in a modest building at an undisclosed location in the Chicago metro area. Besides Jon and Andy, there are seven additional full-time workers, well paid men and women hired from the area’s underprivileged and unemployed. They and their staff spend the day opening, sorting, and organizing packs and boxes of cards, as well as packaging and addressing trades and contest winnings, and all have some modicum of blogging skill and take their turns creating the posts on the website.

The “gum” part of Community Gum is interesting. When packs are opened that contain gum, that pink chewy substance is meticulously stacked and lovingly carried to the back room, where a converted wine refrigerated storage case is used to store them in optimum temperature and humidity. After the weekly Friday contest idea conferences, some of the gum is retrieved as a “way to go!” treat for everyone for a job well done.

Well, it’s possible that not all of the information is entirely accurate, but you get the idea — Jon & Andy have a quality setup, and I enjoyed the trade.